WHAT has the Australian-raised American Mel Gibson got against the English? First he had rampaging Scots warlord William Wallace conquering York in a piece of historical hogwash in Braveheart; now he battles against English Redcoats even stiffer than an anaesthetic as the brave Americans fight the War of Independence in 1776.

It is little consolation that Spike Lee is up in arms over The Patriot's sanitised depiction of black slaves. Two wrongs don't make a right, and these Patriot fun and games with history - never the strongest subject on the American curriculum - leave a sour taste. And to think we've just allowed him to top the bill in our Chicken Run!

Director Roland Emmerich gave the world Independence Day and Godzilla, summer blockbusters writ large, and if his latest $100 million epic sought to be judged as nothing more than an action movie in period costume, then it would pass muster, for the battle scenes are second only to The Gladiator this year in the visual impact of the bloody combat. However, like Ang Lee's American Civil war drama Ride With The Devil last year, it wants to pass comment too. Here is history in the re-telling, distorted as a party political broadcast.

The Patriot is a highly emotional and emotive family drama, driven too much by the motives of its central character, Gibson's widowed and weary war veteran turned conscientious objector, Benjamin Martin.

Blighted by guilt over war crimes, he wants to concentrate on raising his seven children, making rocking chairs and running his South Carolina plantation with whites and blacks in perfect harmony, only to take up his tomahawk and musket and lead a militia hit squad when a sadistic English colonel (Jason Isaacs) kills one of his sons.

Gibson gives everything for his $25 million fee, even allowing himself to look his 45 years as he wavers between being a caring Robin Williams stereotype and a freedom-fighting Mad Axe. However, he so dominates the camera that supporting players are cardboard cut-outs, especially Heath Ledger's portrayal of his eldest son, Joely Richardson in a role as flimsy as that backless premiere dress she wore the other day, and Jason Isaacs as an English baddie in the vein of Steven Berkoff and Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham.

The Patriot is the historical romp re-written as a Vietnam movie, idealistic propaganda to make the blood boil.